Social Conservatism Beyond the Easy Parts
James Dobson (official photo)
Ross Douthat has a great column in today’s times looking at American social conservatism through the lens of Judd Apatow’s movies. All three Apatow films have, as he points out, strains of conservative values running through them. But in The 40 Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up conservative choices wind up working out suspiciously well. In the darker Funny People, by contrast, bad choices have unchangeable consequences and doing the right thing proves painful:
Still a virgin in middle age? Not to worry — you’ll find a caring, foxy woman who’s been waiting her whole life for an awkward, idealistic guy like you. Pregnant from a drunken one-night stand? Good news — the oaf who knocked you up will turn out to be a decent guy, and you’ll be able to keep the baby and your career as a rising entertainment-news anchorwoman. Frittering away your life on porn and pot? Fear not — your wasted twenties won’t stop you from being a great dad.
With “Funny People,” though, Apatow is offering a more realistic morality play. This time, doing the right thing has significant costs — but you have to do it anyway. This time, doing the wrong things for too long has significant consequences — and you have to live with them. It’s the first Apatow film in which love doesn’t conquer all. And it’s the first Apatow film in which you get punished for your sins.
Ross says this is “probably what American audiences don’t like about” Funny People because the United States is a country that’s “conservative right up until the moment that it costs us.”
I think this explains a lot about the appeal of anti-gay crusades to social conservative leaders. Most of what “traditional values” asks of people is pretty hard. All the infidelity and divorce and premarital sex and bad parenting and whatnot take place because people actually want to do the things traditional values is telling them not to do. And the same goes for most of the rest of the Christian recipe. Acting in a charitable and forgiving manner all the time is hard. Loving your enemies is hard. Turning the other cheek is hard. Homosexuality is totally different. For a small minority of the population, of course, the injunction “don’t have sex with other men!” (or, as the case may be, other women) is painfully difficult to live up to. But for the vast majority of people this is really, really easy to do. Campaigns against gay rights, gay people, and gay sex thus have a lot of the structural elements of other forms of crusading against sexual excess or immorality, but they’re not really asking most people to do anything other than become self-righteous about their pre-existing preferences.
113 Responses to “Social Conservatism Beyond the Easy Parts”
Register
RSSLogin
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Matt YglesiasContact Me
Donate
August 10th, 2009 at 10:02 am
Obvious but well-said.
August 10th, 2009 at 10:10 am
Steve Carrell in Virgin was hardly an idealistic abstainer. The movie clearly showed he tried to have sex, but was just too awkward and unlucky and gave up.
August 10th, 2009 at 10:11 am
It must be especially hard for Republicans.
August 10th, 2009 at 10:13 am
Although what’s wierd about anti-gay propaganda is that supposedly, if gays are allowed to do their thing, eventually we ALL will be doing it. They’ll convert our kids! They’ll destroy our marriages! Makes me wonder just how easy it is for James Dobson and co. to resist having sex with other men. Certainly Ted Haggart, Larry Craig, Jim West, and other high-profile anti-gay activists have had some trouble with that.
August 10th, 2009 at 10:19 am
Spot on, Matt. Another version of cheap grace, hating on gays when you have no inclination at all to be one.
But what explains the hating on gays by people who DO have the inclination?
August 10th, 2009 at 10:19 am
Acting in a charitable and forgiving manner all the time is hard.
It must be especially hard for Republicans.
I’d say the 2008 primary campaign makes it pretty tough for Democrats to point fingers about “charitable and forgiving.”
But I’m having trouble coming up with a liberal “cheap grace” equivalent of the conservative campaign against gays. The big moral campaigns from the left are against racism and poverty, but one of the perennial conservatives attacks on liberals is our (sometimes near-comical) awareness of our complicity in the sins driving those problems
August 10th, 2009 at 10:20 am
Seeing Milk for the first time this past weekend makes this post more poignant. Although, the way they portrayed Dan White, it was almost as if White didn’t hate gays. He seemed more selfish, or “desperate,” than bigoted. I wasn’t even born yet, so hell if I know what White was really like. Good post Matt.
August 10th, 2009 at 10:20 am
I won’t argue with your conclusion, but I’m having trouble finding the moral commonality between a guy who’s a virgin and a woman who’s a slut. How is getting pregnant out of wedlock a “conservative choice”?
August 10th, 2009 at 10:23 am
ROSS’ friends are conservative until it costs them.
My friends are mainly liberal all the time.
Maybe white people do have an experiential bias after all.
August 10th, 2009 at 10:29 am
Careful. This thread is highly volatile Hector-bait.
August 10th, 2009 at 10:34 am
Watch out kids, Porn and Pot will ruin your life! If only you too had been born to an elite author, then you too could have a serious and important career by the time you’re in your mid-20’s!
It says so much about Matt that he believes those who have chosen to enjoy their youths are the ones who have wasted it.
August 10th, 2009 at 10:40 am
Soullite I don’t see anywhere in there where Matt talked about porn or pot? Maybe refresh yourself on the function of block quotes.
August 10th, 2009 at 10:41 am
See, I found a different part of that article interesting- the almost faith based assumption that doing the “wrong thing” has significant costs. Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t, and for certain “wrong things” by conservative lights, there really just aren’t any meaningful costs at all. In fact, other than their say so, there isn’t much reason to think these things are wrong at all.
It strikes me kind of as the horror movie morality- don’t have premarital sex, kids! You’ll be MURDERED BY A SERIAL KILLER!
August 10th, 2009 at 10:41 am
You’re bottom line point, Matt, is sound.
But what makes Douthat’s piece “excellent”?
Based on what you have here, Douthat’s just reflexively smearing social liberals. None of things cited represent distinctively conservative “values.” Would a social liberal not hope the oaf who knocked you up turned out to be a good guy and great dad. Would a social liberal not hope that if you wasted your early years on porn and pot..etc? Worse, some of these are distinctively contra-conservative: the woman has sex out of wedlock AND keeps working rather than giving up her career. Douhthat portrays the latter as good thing. So social conservatives have come to embrace this standard feminist value? I suspect that’s the most interesting reveal in his column.
August 10th, 2009 at 10:42 am
soullite, that was Douthat’s quote, not MY’s.
August 10th, 2009 at 10:44 am
Orwell made the point that the injunction to ‘turn the other cheek’ is made in the expectation that you will be hit again, and harder. Christianity is not about feeling good.
August 10th, 2009 at 10:46 am
While I agree pretty strongly with MYs comments, I’d like to address the starting point of Apatow’s films. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to see Funny People yet, I don’t think the personal conservatism that Apatow was as cost free as people make it out to be. If seen from the eye’s of Seth Rogen’s character in Knocked Up, the decision to settle down was a significant sacrifice in freedom and immediate happiness, I think people miss this because the concept of this sacrifice as not only good, but in fact necessary is so heavily ingrained in our culture. From the inside however it is still a horrifying and major change to ones life.
In 40 Year-Old Virgin, Steve Carell doesn’t seem either content or well-placed in the world due to his abstinence. The bright colors and smile may hide this for most people he interacts with, and most viewers, but to me only serve to highlight the real dissonance between his character and society. Later, when he does find romantic love, its not without cost either. He is forced to break with the life he has developed, and persona he has constructed, and the difficulty of that break is only heightened by the length of his abstinence, abstinence not just in the simple term but also from polite society and entire parts of life.
Again, in both of these films it is easy to take the view of the objective outsider and say that Apatow’s leads make no sacrifices, but this doesn’t really bear up when you consider the concerns of the characters. And Apatow seems a director first concerned with character.
(I didn’t give much thought to Katherine Hiegle’s character, because while I don’t buy into the concept of Apatow as a misogynist, I do believe he is very much producing movies as a man for men.)
August 10th, 2009 at 10:49 am
Makes sense. After all, American conservatism (which, of course, influences European conservatism all the time) has for a long time been a movement of If It Feels Good, Do It. Driving a SUV is bad for the environment? Buy two of ‘em! Sexual harassment objectifies women? Anyone complainin’ about it is a harridan feminazi lesbo! Passive smoking causes cancer? Smoke big fat cigats, blow their smoke on the face of the liberals! It’s not good to have an all-meat diet? Better make it an all-ENDANGERED-meat diet, just for extra political incorrectness! Social conservatism has had that annoying fuddy-duddy element inherent in it, though, saying that some stuff’s immoral – so what’s better than making it a narrow one-issue (okay, two-issue – abortion being the other, not that that one takes too many sacrifices for men either) movement which doesn’t require one to do any sacrifices.
August 10th, 2009 at 10:52 am
Watch out kids, Porn and Pot will ruin your life! If only you too had been born to an elite author, then you too could have a serious and important career by the time you’re in your mid-20’s!
It says so much about Matt that he believes those who have chosen to enjoy their youths are the ones who have wasted it.
I don’t think there’s anything in that quote about not enjoying one’s youth. But the characters in that particular movie are largely doing absolutely nothing productive. Is that going to ruin your life? Maybe not. But a lot of people in situations like that end up working shitty jobs for most of their life. I have a lot of friends like that. Five years ago, when they were in their mid-20s in similar situations as the characters, they were Office Depot assistant managers. Now? They’re Office Depot managers. I wouldn’t be surprised if they still were 5 or 10 years from now. The critique Ross makes is that the movie makes it seem far easier than it is to rise from a situation where you’re not in school and not making any money. Most people think that 16-25 is fine for partying and getting stoned every day, but that it’s probably best for your long-term prospects to clean up things after that.
August 10th, 2009 at 10:52 am
This post really nails something about America.
Matt’s formulation is much better than Ross’s, of course. America is not “conservative until it costs us.” America is a basically hedonistic, libertarian country with a creeping sense of anxiety that its hedonism may eventually catch up with it.
It expiates that anxiety by beating up on convenient scapegoats: mainly gay men and unwed teenage girls. Then goes back to enjoying more serial monogamy and french fries.
August 10th, 2009 at 11:04 am
Meh! The idea that Apatow’s films are somehow conservative in nature–much less bracingly so, as you had it a few days ago–is terrifically vapid.
August 10th, 2009 at 11:06 am
Matt, I love you and all, but for the life of me I can’t understand why you continue to try to hoist the DOuthat petard on the world. I mean really, this isn’t even that hard; audiences have a generally negative view of Funny People because it’s a dramedy that’s being marketed as a straight comedy with all of these comedic actors about the world of stand-up. So when you’re expecting that, and instead you get Funny People, it’s kind of like ordering a black leather couch and having a brown one shipped to you instead; you might like it just fine for what it is, but what it is just isn’t what you wanted.
And even if Douthat is right about why the movie isn’t all that popular, it seems rather ridiculous that he doesn’t even really entertain the possibility, given that it’s the simplest explanation. Instead, we go straight for the Douthatian; assert a very dubious premise as though it’s the most obvious fact in the world, and spin a convoluted argument out of it. If you get lucky, the reader will forget this is all based on a shaky premise in the first place. I would think you’d call that out a bit more often.
August 10th, 2009 at 11:10 am
Although I do agree that your overall point is sound. I just wish you wouldn’t give legitimacy to Douthat’s bullshit.
August 10th, 2009 at 11:20 am
Douthat is basically a creep.
August 10th, 2009 at 11:23 am
Unfortunately I haven’t been able to see Funny People yet,
No, there is nothing unfortunate about this: It is a horrible movie.
August 10th, 2009 at 11:24 am
And since when is growing up and taking responsibility for yourself a specifically conservative value?
August 10th, 2009 at 11:25 am
Re: Careful. This thread is highly volatile Hector-bait.
Fumphis,
I’m not sure what you were getting at, but disregarding all the jabs at social concervatives by the yahoo peanut gallery, Yglesias actually has a good point here. The focus on gay marriage and gay sex _is_, quite simply, an attempt to get ‘cheap grace’, and like all such attempts it is immoral and un-Christian. Morality is supposed to require sacrifice- just what sacrifice does it take from me, or other straight Christians, to claim that gay sex is wrong? This is part of the reason that I’ve changed my mind on gay sex, and gay marriage. I don’t believe that gay sex is always wrong, and I think gays should be able to have civil marriages performed by the State (though I am very strongly opposed to _churches_ performing gay marriage, as I don’t believe that gays, divorced people, or the voluntarily childless can be married in a Christian sense). If gay (civil) marriage comes up for a vote again in my state, I will vote for it.
In the matter of heterosexual behavior, as a straight Christian I can and do have opinions, since these are temptations that I face myself. I believe that many kinds of heterosexual behavior are indeed wrong- most divorces first and foremost, of course. Our Lord didn’t say anything about birth control, homosexuality or premarital sex, but He did talk about divorce, and laid down a law that is pretty unequivocal (and very difficult to follow). My change of heart about gay relationships does not imply an acceptance of divorce, swinging, wh*cking off, condoms, or various other forms of heterosexual behavior.
August 10th, 2009 at 11:25 am
Douthat’s columns are as interesting and funny as Apatow’s movies.
August 10th, 2009 at 11:29 am
Douthat is a great writer and man of ideas by the way, and I applaud his efforts to preach the gospel of life from the New York Times’ editorial page.
August 10th, 2009 at 11:30 am
Worse, some of these are distinctively contra-conservative: the woman has sex out of wedlock AND keeps working rather than giving up her career. Douhthat portrays the latter as good thing. So social conservatives have come to embrace this standard feminist value? I suspect that’s the most interesting reveal in his column.
Indeed. The thing a lot of people don’t seem to notice is that standing athwart history and yelling “stop!” may serve a useful place in society once in a while, but no matter how much people may claim otherwise, it is not even one tiny bit, not even remotely ideologically coherent. I mean, the idea is a joke, just for the simple reason that history is a moving target. I’d call Buckley’s formulation of conservativism nihilistic, but I’m not sure that’s fair to nihilists. The idea of any intellectual integrity, let alone sophistication, to “conservativism for its own sake” is simply a joke.
Today’s conservatives support women working – for less than men make, with no serious recourse in case of gender discrimination, only in pink-collar and non-threatening careers and positions, but still working – even after childbirth. They don’t care and in most cases are too dumb to even notice that this belief is inconsistent with that of the conservatives of even their parents’ generation. It’s not about an ideology or even a policy, it’s simply a stubborn, childish resistance to whatever’s new at the moment.
August 10th, 2009 at 11:32 am
And since when is growing up and taking responsibility for yourself a specifically conservative value?
If it’s good, then it’s conservative. According to conservative “intellectuals” like Douthat and Andrew Sullivan, at least.
August 10th, 2009 at 11:32 am
“After all, American conservatism (which, of course, influences European conservatism all the time) has for a long time been a movement of If It Feels Good, Do It.”
To a big degree, American conservatism was very heavily affected by late 1960s hedonism – even though we usually see American liberalism in that role. Just compare what would be a typical American upper class Rockefeller Republican businessman circa 1955 versus his archetypal equivalent in 2009.
August 10th, 2009 at 11:39 am
For a small minority of the population, of course, the injunction “don’t have sex with other men!” (or, as the case may be, other women) is painfully difficult to live up to. But for the vast majority of people this is really, really easy to do.
Here I think “majority” is a better term than “vast majority” and the “really, really” is unnecessary. While the percentage of gay-identified people is rather small (less than 5% for bot men and women), the percentage of people with sexual experiences with the same gender is considerably higher (see, Kinsey, Alfred, Sexual Behaviour…). Whether they realize it or not, social conservatives’ worldview implicitly acknowledges that same-sex desire exists on a spectrum, and that same-sex desire is a common part of human sexuality. At the same time, it denies the sexuality of people who have same-sex attraction that is as strong and immutable as some straight people’s desire for the opposite sex is.
Matt’s statement is seemingly based on the assumption that unamibiguous same-sex desire is real, valid, but rare and that those do not identify as gay are as only attracted to the opposite sex. I’m not saying “everyone is bisexual.” I doubt that, and believe that most “straight” people are pretty much exclusively oriented towards the opposite sex. However, I also believe that there’s a pretty sizable minority of generally straight-identified people for which their sexuality is not so cut-and-dry.
Heterosexism is not just about people being “self-righteous about their pre-existing preferences.” That’s part of it, but it’s also wrapped up with all sorts of conflicts and ambiguities that many people have about their own sexuality. Basically, this issue is, like a lot of things, a lot more complicated than Matt makes it seem.
August 10th, 2009 at 11:40 am
“The thing a lot of people don’t seem to notice is that standing athwart history and yelling “stop!” may serve a useful place in society once in a while, but no matter how much people may claim otherwise, it is not even one tiny bit, not even remotely ideologically coherent. I mean, the idea is a joke, just for the simple reason that history is a moving target. I’d call Buckley’s formulation of conservativism nihilistic, but I’m not sure that’s fair to nihilists.”
I think this is a critical point. You can’t make decisions by being “conservative” – it’s not a workable way to decide what to do in new situations (and situations are new very frequently, because Fortuna, as Machiavelli would have it, exists and meddles in human affairs). Aristotle, for example, emphasizes “prudence” but prudence is explicitly NOT conservatism.
August 10th, 2009 at 11:45 am
There is nothing “conservative” about an Apatow film. This premise is ridiculous, laughable and silly.
Apatow’s characters have casual sex, take drugs, cheat on their spouses (mainly in “Funny People”), find a commonality among various immigrant groups in an urban setting (the electronics store) and delay getting married in favor of hanging out, playing videogames and slacking.
Just because they don’t get an abortion, that makes them “conservative”? Ridiculous, Matt.
Conservative “I got mine and f@#k you” values, racism and fear of the ethnic home invader, can be seen in Dirty Harry and Charles Bronson movies. But not Apatow.
August 10th, 2009 at 11:45 am
“Doing the right thing” is conservative?”
Good to know.
August 10th, 2009 at 11:48 am
My change of heart about gay relationships does not imply an acceptance of divorce, swinging, wh*cking off, condoms, or various other forms of heterosexual behavior.
Out of curiosity, is the masturbation/condom hate based on that one line in the Old Testament where Onan was told not to spill his seed? That seems really flimsy and not very applicable to me. I grew up in a very fundamentalist, literal word of the Bible church and they didn’t even hold that view. And they looked down on dancing.
August 10th, 2009 at 11:51 am
Just because they don’t get an abortion, that makes them “conservative”? Ridiculous, Matt.
They’re conservative in the sense that the flawed characters eventually end up making the “family values” choice. The virgin ends up finding the right woman and marries before having sex (not that that was really his intention), the man who gets someone pregnant decides to stop partying and settle down and stay with her, etc. One might argue these things don’t really have much to do with modern conservatism, and that would probably be correct. But it’s the usage Douthat is going for.
August 10th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
Douthat is a great writer and man of ideas by the way, and I applaud his efforts to preach the gospel of life from the New York Times’ editorial page.
er…the gospel of life and racism. And being disappointed when Buckley told him he wasn’t there the night some other conservative assholes made Ayn Rand cry with an anti-Semitic taunt. (And being so unembarassed about that to include it in an article.)
Why don’t you guys go whip each other in Bolivia.
August 10th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
[...] The column seems well received elsewhere. I don’t necessarily agree with these. For starters, it seems kind of dangerous to [...]
August 10th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
To a big degree, American conservatism was very heavily affected by late 1960s hedonism – even though we usually see American liberalism in that role. Just compare what would be a typical American upper class Rockefeller Republican businessman circa 1955 versus his archetypal equivalent in 2009.
When I do the comparison burritoboy suggests, basically what I get is that the 1950s businessman is having an affair with his secretary, owns a second home in the Hamptons, enjoys cigars and brandy, and is driven around in an expensive car; while the 2000s businessman is having an affair with an escort he found through an agency, owns a second home in the Hamptons and a third home on a private island in the Caribbean or the Mediterranean, enjoys cocaine, cigars, and brandy, and is driven around in an expensive SUV. The 1950s businessman is “classier”, more discreet, and more of a gentleman, so really I think the difference is just that today’s businessman doesn’t bother to give a nod to propriety or the trappings of noblesse oblige, and is more of a jerk. But the chief differences seem largely superficial.
August 10th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
It doesn’t seem to me that Katherine Heigl’s character in Knocked Up made a particularly conservative choice. Women from across the political spectrum choose, sometimes, to go ahead with unplanned pregnancies. Seen on its own, that choice is compatible with many other political beliefs. The difference between conservatives and liberals is rather that the former don’t believe that women should have the opportunity to make this choice.
Also, I agree with a couple comments above in that I don’t see much value–and much less excellence–in Douthat’s column. He operates under the unjustified assumption that making responsible life decisions is a conservative value. This, to me, is a baffling premise.
August 10th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
Um, this post is pretty much totally incoherent. “Porn & pot” are … conservative? What? Assigning a political label of ‘conservative’ or ‘liberal’ to behavioral characteristics which don’t have much of anything to do with politics is just plain bad writing. And Mr. Douthat is very guilty of such bad writing.
I think ‘Funny People’ isn’t doing so well because of the very simple Law of Diminishing Returns. These sound / look-alike movies have saturated the market, people are sick of Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, and all of that crew, not to mention Judd Apatow himself. And people are even sicker (still) of Adam Sandler. Plus the previews just don’t look ‘funny’.
August 10th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
He operates under the unjustified assumption that making responsible life decisions is a conservative value. This, to me, is a baffling premise.
To tie this back into homosexuality, denying your sexuality, marrying someone of the opposite sex, and then having affairs with people of the same sex strikes me as a series of rather irresponsible and damaging life decisions that no one would make were it not for conservative values.
August 10th, 2009 at 12:13 pm
They’re conservative in the sense that the flawed characters eventually end up making the “family values” choice.
So everyone who chooses to get married is making a conservative choice? Having children is necessarily behaving in accordance with conservative values?
This proves a little too much, don’t you think?
August 10th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
This Douthat thing is just not working for the NY Times. Is McArdle available in a few months?
So everyone who chooses to get married is making a conservative choice? Having children is necessarily behaving in accordance with conservative values?
That’s how you know America is a conservative country: people get married and have babies.
August 10th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
Hector:
Douthat is a great writer and man of ideas by the way, and I applaud his efforts to preach the gospel of life from the New York Times’ editorial page.
Weak. On the abortion issue there does seem to be movies about women having the unexpected baby instead of an abortion: Juno and Knocked up and another I can’t think of.
The Family Values movie of the year is Step Brothers. Hilarious.
August 10th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
[...] Matthew Yglesias likes the column, too Ross says this is “probably what American audiences don’t like about” Funny Peoplebecause the United States is a country that’s “conservative right up until the moment that it costs us.” [...]
August 10th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
Since when are personal values “conservative values”? To my understanding, liberals also want people to have healthy relationships and for all children to be loved and wanted. We just aren’t as interested in punishing deviance as we are in finding solutions for it. Good education, public health, and family planning are part of a liberal agenda, last I checked.
August 10th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
Re: Out of curiosity, is the masturbation/condom hate based on that one line in the Old Testament where Onan was told not to spill his seed? That seems really flimsy and not very applicable to me. I grew up in a very fundamentalist, literal word of the Bible church and they didn’t even hold that view. And they looked down on dancing.
Adam,
I don’t have time to respond at length, but suffice it to say that the case against wh*cking off and against (arguably) condoms doesn’t rest on Scripture. It rests on tradition and on natural-law reasoning, which for an Anglican like myself are as authoritative as Scripture. As the saying from Hooker goes, religious truth is a three-legged stool, resting on scripture, tradition and reason.
August 10th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
I figured Hector would like this, and he does. At least he’s consistent, and as hating gays becomes as unacceptable in polite society as hating blacks, I suspect it will be adopted by many social conservatives (douthat seems to agree with it).
But it’s worth noting that there’s no secular reason to accept the rest of conservative sexual morality. People change and make mistakes in partner selection; makin divorce difficult condemns those people to lifelong unhappiness. Heck, even some affairs are semi-consensual and allow people to keep their marriages together. And masturbation is not only part of a healthy sex life, but suppressing it leads to sexual repression.
In contrast, teachings about turning the other cheek and universal love have great appeal even to nonbelievers.
We aren’t going to really make as much progress as we need to on these issues until christians understand that these sorts of sexual choices are just that; they don’t define morality for everyone (whereas universal love arguably does).
August 10th, 2009 at 1:10 pm
I was under the impression that there was a generally understood definition of “conservative,” maybe “small-c conservative” or some similar locution, which implied a personal conservatism of disposition that doesn’t really necessitate political conservatism and isn’t meant to be opposed to political Liberalism – i.e., the sense in which because I drink rarely and in moderation, don’t use illegal drugs, don’t take a lot of physical personal risks, aspire to someday marry a woman and stay married to her for the rest of our mutual coexistence, etc., I’m “conservative”. You might also wish to describe someone like this as “lame” or “boring” or “staid”, depending on your perspective. Maybe “old-fashioned,” which isn’t so bad in my opinion, but I’m a personally conservative sort of person in many ways, which doesn’t have any bearing on my political beliefs, which tend to appear way out to the left of Yglesias’. This is the way Apatow seems conservative – I don’t know, but don’t think he’s politically conservative, and he’s certainly “liberal” (small l?) in many ways, but the heroes of his first two movies ultimately make the boring choices, and I’m pretty sure Apatow wants us to think that’s a good thing.
(In the case of Virgin, which I loved, I agree that for those characters those were the right choices, but was left really uncomfortable by Elizabeth Banks’ final scene because it slid too easily for me between “Andy can’t handle this woman’s sexuality” and “this woman’s sexuality is weird and off-putting, which is why she’s cool with Seth Rogen stepping in at the end”. In the case of Knocked Up, I’m less certain those were the right choices for those characters, but Apatow was stacking the deck; I didn’t get the perception that the film was misogynistic because it was about how women ruin guys’ abilities to have fun. APATOW ruins those guys’ abilities to have fun, and seemed clearly invested in making it clear that once Rogen’s character was a little removed from it he could see that living with all those dudes was kind of horrifying. I don’t like Katherine Heigl, but I thought she was easily the most sympathetic character in the movie; her subsequent trashing of the film for making her character unsympathetic made my head spin.)
The words conservative and liberal mean things besides their assignments to our political spectrum, and calling something the conservative choice doesn’t mean you’re calling it the Conservative choice, which is to say the Republican choice.
August 10th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
I’ll have to take Matt’s and Ross’ word on Funny People, because I’m not going to see it. But for the life of me I didn’t see a social agenda in either 40-Year-Old Virgin or Knocked Up. Maybe I’m crazy.
On the other hand, it’s also possible that Douthat reads Matt’s blog and, desperate for cultural references that might give conservatism a chance of appealing to young people by being cool or funny, happily glommed on to the idea that such films carry a conservative social agenda. Possible!
August 10th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
…conservative choices wind up working out suspiciously well.
Social & developmental failure, not just conservative virtue (or liberal vice), accounts for the (emotional, not just sexual) barrenness of of the virgin’s first 40 years, & his belated ability to attract a good woman is neither a costless reward of conservative virtue or easy unwinding of liberal vice. It doesn’t mean his earlier failure had no cost, or even, arguably, redeem that cost. Even in a world where conservatism amounts to little more than arrested development plus happy endings, this isn’t that.
August 10th, 2009 at 1:20 pm
How is getting pregnant out of wedlock a “conservative choice”?
Well, being willfully ignorant about sex and birth control is a ‘conservative’ choice. That’s not arguable.
Whether his businessman example works or not, burritoboy makes a very good point, one I had thought of too, in the last few years: “To a big degree, American conservatism was very heavily affected by late 1960s hedonism – even though we usually see American liberalism in that role.”
Absolutely right. ‘If it feels good, do it’ is an absolutely key component of the Reagan cultural revolution. Consequences don’t matter; ‘deficits don’t matter’ as Cheney famously said; the real problem staring you in the face doesn’t matter. Just be optimistic! If your optimism flags for even a nanosecond, you are obviously un-American and un-Electable. The Reagan Revolution took the simple hedonism of the 60s (vastly overestimated, BTW – I was there) and codified it as a core political doctrine. It’s perverse, and it’s HORRIBLE for the country.
August 10th, 2009 at 1:29 pm
“The 1950s businessman is “classier”, more discreet, and more of a gentleman, so really I think the difference is just that today’s businessman doesn’t bother to give a nod to propriety or the trappings of noblesse oblige, and is more of a jerk. But the chief differences seem largely superficial.”
At the end of the day, it probably is a superficial distinction. But it is an actual distinction and one that’s more important for those who claim to be conservative rather than those who claim to be liberals. Liberals have roughly the same political / economic opinion about the Rockefeller Republican of 1955 and his grandson of 2009 (liberals have mostly a critique of both CEO’s too large economic power within capitalism). Conservatives shouldn’t have the same opinion at all of the two: being discreet, classier, more prudent or cautious, showing respect for outward propriety, having noblesse oblige and so on are very important conservative values. Yet the current conservative movement celebrates the CEO of 2009 far more than the Rockefeller Republicans of 1955 celebrated the CEO’s of their era: i.e., in actuality, the conservative movement showed that they’re far more interested in supporting the economically powerful simply than in conservative values.
August 10th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
“Consequences don’t matter; ‘deficits don’t matter’ as Cheney famously said; the real problem staring you in the face doesn’t matter. Just be optimistic! If your optimism flags for even a nanosecond, you are obviously un-American and un-Electable.”
Or just a form of happy-face nihilism, which is where we began our comments.
August 10th, 2009 at 1:37 pm
Hector @50: So how did you modify natural-law theory to accommodate gay sex, without letting it accommodate masturbation as well?
August 10th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
Fumphis,
At the risk of sounding flippant, one can have a meaningful, committed relationship with a person of the same sex, that in some ways similr to a Christian marriage. One can’t have such a relationship with one’s hand. Additionally, I see no reason to doubt what sacred tradition says about wh*cking off, whereas the facts we now have about the development of sexual orintation give us such a plausible reason to demur from them on the issue of homosexuality.
Dilan,
Huh? Your paragraph is as difficult to parse as some of Yglesias’ stuff. I don’t ‘like’ a more tolerant attitude towards gays and gay marriage, I have come to believe it happens to be true. I think St. Paul and St. Jude were right to condemn what they did, but I think we know today some things that they didn’t, and that their specific condemnations of certain behaviors that were common in the ancient world (and in some medieval societies, and even some places in the world today) doesn’t really apply to many naturally homosexual people in our society.
August 10th, 2009 at 2:21 pm
So many people really do miss the point, but the more smart progressives like Yglesias and Klein certainly get it.
Intelligent social conservatives are saying that progressives shouldn’t forget the importance of personal responsibility in their zeal to make the world a better place. It is an philosophical issue, not some personal attack on progressives.
See Matt’s explanation of we those who care need to take personal responsibility for the easy success of the insidious and cynical attacks on health-care debate as a prime example.
See http://senseorsensibility.com for more on this.
August 10th, 2009 at 2:27 pm
Hector:
You aren’t wrong in saying that we know more now than they know then. But that problem infects a lot of religion and calls the whole enyterprise into question, because so much of it is explainig things that we have better explanations for now. You can see this most clearly in things like the genesis creation story, but it also applies to moral teachings (e.g. leviticus).
August 10th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
I think St. Paul and St. Jude were right to condemn what they did, but I think we know today some things that they didn’t
You should probably consider this logic when you try to defend anything on the basis of “sacred tradition”. Those people lived a very long time ago, in a completely different society, and that wasn’t the only thing they condemned that shouldn’t apply a couple thousand years later.
August 10th, 2009 at 2:37 pm
Adam:
I grew up in a very fundamentalist, literal word of the Bible church and they didn’t even hold that view. And they looked down on dancing.
This is the kind of fundamentalism I respect, like in Kevin Bacon’s Footloose, not Hector’s weaksauce religion with its toleration of gays.
If it’s good, then it’s conservative. According to conservative “intellectuals” like Douthat and Andrew Sullivan, at least.
I’ve never understood how gays can be conservative, like Sullivan, Raimondo and the Log Cabins. There seems to be a contradiction. Obviously all gays are individuals so they all won’t be liberal, like Greenwald, but still.
August 10th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
Matt, I hit upon this same conclusion on an essay I wrote on abortion called Anti-abortionism is easy; why not have a position requiring real moral courage?.
August 10th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
Somewhat random thoughts:
1. Too often people commingle “traditional” values with “conservative” values, and then use “conservative” in the modern political sense.
2. As an atheist progressive, I believe in many traditional values myself and have thought for a long time that liberals have shot themselves in the foot badly by abdicating the term “family values” and portraying it as something bad and not presenting their own. This is giving into the Gingrich strategy of using positive terms for your side and negative ones for the other. I think most liberals would agree, for example, that supporting children in a loving two-parent home is a good thing; that it’s good that women can choose to keep a child under tough circumstances and then get some support in the decision.
Matt is contributing to this abdication.
3. I know conservatives like to say that Juno and Knocked-Up are conservative because the mother chooses to keep the baby. Let’s repeat that: she CHOOSES to keep the baby. Neither of these films ever suggest that a woman should have no right to choose.
4. What do we say about Ensign and Sanford? Are they conservatives who made “liberal” choices?
5. Further, because someone thinks that it
is none of government’s business, and should not be criminal, to engage in adultery, fornication, gay sex, or prostitution, it should not suggest support, but liberty. (Where is Goldwater when we could use him?)
August 10th, 2009 at 2:47 pm
[...] him. So, here’s Neuroworld’s first only-Matt-Yglesias eligible Yglesias Award, for a great explanation of modern social conservatism: Most of what “traditional values” asks of people is pretty hard. All the infidelity and [...]
August 10th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
Chris Dornan:
So many people really do miss the point, but the more smart progressives like Yglesias and Klein certainly get it.
Intelligent social conservatives are saying that progressives shouldn’t forget the importance of personal responsibility in their zeal to make the world a better place. It is an philosophical issue, not some personal attack on progressives.
See Matt’s explanation of we those who care need to take personal responsibility for the easy success of the insidious and cynical attacks on health-care debate as a prime example.
Progressives don’t trust certain segments of society, like Wall Street, with having personal responsibility, which is why we insist on democratically accountable governmental checks and balances on it, i.e. regulation.
Conservative Alan Greenspan trusted that the players at the great poker game on Wall Street would be responsible enough to not wreck and said as much. He was wrong and admits it. What has Douchehat said about this? Nothing. He’s all about saving the fetuses.
The Republican are all about screaming “personal responsibility” at the poor and working poor (see health care reform). They’re bullies.
August 10th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
A lot of people are taking the “Apatow’s movies aren’t conservative at all” stance, and while I took a stab at this in the other Apatow thread, let me try to explain what (in my view) is conservative about them.
Obviously there’s nothing conservative about saying “getting married and raising a family is good” or “stable, monogamous relationships are good.” Nor is there anything inherently conservative in the choice to have a baby instead of an abortion, and nothing in Knocked Up suggests that Apatow believes the law should prohibit or limit that choice. What’s conservative about his movies, though, is how he portrays the other, non-traditional choices made by the other characters: he portrays them as destructive, to self and others.
In 40-Year-Old Virgin, Andy is repressed and anxious, but has a better idea of what makes a relationship work than his hedonistic friends. His friends give him advice for getting a girlfriend—working on his personal appearance, trying conversational tricks—but over the course of the film all three of them are shown to have the Wrong Idea. Paul Rudd’s character is ridiculously bitter and nihilistic about love, until he’s hooked up in a nice stable relationship. Romany Malco’s character seems to be the most sexually confident of the bunch, but his constant cheating reveals deep insecurity, as he tearfully admits to Andy. With Andy’s support and advice, he’s able to quit his cheatin’ ways and find happiness with his girlfriend. Even Catherine Keener, Andy’s girlfriend, has an unhealthy relationship with sex, as we see from the revelation that one of her daughters was accidental and from her inability to talk productively about sex with her teenage daughter. Waiting until she and Andy are married to have sex—even though all other issues have been resolved—is shown to be the basis for a stable, healthy relationship.
Knocked Up is even more stark. Whether or not to have an abortion is Katherine Heigl’s choice…but her mother, who says she should, is shown to be cold, heartless, and materialistic. She says that Heigl should focus on her career, and then later she can have a “real baby.” Heigl is repelled by her mother, and so is the audience. The mother never makes another appearance in the movie; her sole role is to represent abortion as cynical careerism.
In both movies, then, the traditional choice—get married before having sex, have the baby—is not given as one of multiple equally valid choices. Instead, it’s the only way to a healthy, happy life. The alternatives are to be like one of the other guys—immature, unhappy, unfulfilled—or like one of the other women, like the drunk girl Andy makes out with (slutty, disgusting), or Andy’s boss (inappropriate), or Elizabeth Bates (sexually over-aggressive and off-putting, at least according to the film), or Katherine Heigl’s mother (heartless, joyless). That seems like clear advocacy of a conservative viewpoint. For the record, I like both movies, in the same way I like South Park even though it frequently subscribes to libertarian or conservative views I don’t share.
August 10th, 2009 at 3:30 pm
Sorry, I meant Elizabeth Banks, not Bates. And Medrawt basically made that part of my argument for me.
August 10th, 2009 at 3:43 pm
[...] is the new face of American social conservatism, I suppose, and to the fact that Ezra Klein and Matt Yglesias (who should know better) almost immediately chimed in their support. But I’m not saying that [...]
August 10th, 2009 at 3:46 pm
“This is the kind of fundamentalism I respect, like in Kevin Bacon’s Footloose, not Hector’s weaksauce religion with its toleration of gays.”
Hector explicitly is not a fundamentalist (quite the opposite, in fact).
You’re primarily familiar with current American conservatism, which is heavily reliant upon a certain strain of Low Church Protestantism. Hector is, if I recall correctly, a High-Church Anglo-Catholic with some inclinations to Christian Socialism, which is quite an entirely different beast. That has it’s own many faults, but banning dancing and moderate liquor consumption is not among Anglo-Catholicism’s pet bugaboos.
Anyway, there’s no fundamentalism as fundamentalist as UltraOrthodox Judaism, and those guys often love dancing and drinking.
August 10th, 2009 at 3:57 pm
tomemos, your armchair analysis of Knocked Up ignores the fact that Heigl finds out she can keep her job after she has her baby (interviewing pregnant celebs). She has no intention to quit her job to raise her child. How is this “conservative” on any level, other than the ignorant Bristol Palin pregnancy mistake?
Heigl was happy to be a single mother, while keeping her job.
Funny People is even more cynical, showing Adam Sandler cheating with a married woman in the guest house while her kids watch a movie starring Adam Sandler. There are no reprocussions for any of this idiocy. Conservative my ass. The entire premise is ridiculous.
August 10th, 2009 at 4:02 pm
Re: You should probably consider this logic when you try to defend anything on the basis of “sacred tradition”. Those people lived a very long time ago, in a completely different society, and that wasn’t the only thing they condemned that shouldn’t apply a couple thousand years later.
Yes, which is why I think that defending anything strictly on the basis that the Church and the Bible say so, is weak. God has a reason for His commands, and natural law moral reasoning is an invaluable tool for figuring out what that reason is. If I thought that tradition was absolutely immutable, I wouldn’t for example, support chemical contraception.
That said, the burden lies on those challenging Sacred Tradition to explain why and how circumstances have changed such that the traditional teaching no longer applied. I think that a plausible case can be made that St. Paul and St. Jude, and for that matter the medieval Scholastics, weren’t aware of the existence of a natural homosexual orientation. I _don’t_ think a plausible case can be made for why, on the basis of a Christian anthropology, self-pleasuring is OK, or why divorce is not a sin.*
Ultimately we need to debate each of these moral issues (sexual, economic, political etc.) on a case by case basis, with scripture, tradition, and natural law as our three guides.
*Sometimes a lesser evil, and a necessary evil, but an evil nonetheless.
August 10th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
tomemos -
I can’t speak for anyone else objecting to the characterization of Apatow’s movies as conservative but my basic problem is with the general approach of treating his movies as a species of simplistic moral allegory. If they’re conservative, they’re conservative in precisely the same fashion as every other work of prosaic fiction which fails to “subvert the dominant paradigm” or aspire to some other self-consciously revolutionary ideal. In truth, they are really just a collection of unimaginative and ultimately mediocre comedies of little to no social importance.
August 10th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
medrawt -
This is the way Apatow seems conservative – I don’t know, but don’t think he’s politically conservative, and he’s certainly “liberal” (small l?) in many ways, but the heroes of his first two movies ultimately make the boring choices, and I’m pretty sure Apatow wants us to think that’s a good thing.
I see where you’re coming from but don’t you think Douhat had something more in mind than being risk adverse and boring when he was praising the film’s conservatism?
August 10th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
Chris Dornan -
Why ever should we accept the profoundly objectionable Neo-Calvinist premise that where conservatism is an ethos personal responsibility, liberalism is properly understood as a surrender to license and hedonism?
August 10th, 2009 at 4:18 pm
Tomemos,
I think that works for Knocked Up, but it works less well for 40 year old. 40 year is the most extreme version of the wanting-to-have-it-both-ways thing that you get with most of these movies, in that Andy gets to not have per-marital sex but his “right” woman manifestly does want to, and everyone in the film recognizes Andy’s choice to be a strange one. Far from defending waiting for sex til marriage, in fact, the most you could say is that the “right” choice is simply that loveless sex is less than optimal. But while Knocked Up is clearly and shrilly antagonistic to people who have abortions, people who have pre-marital sex are, in 40 year old, the norm that Andy struggles to join. And the fact that the movie ends with the hippie anthem Age of Aquarius is sort of important: it’s a movie that celebrates hedonism as such, while Knocked Up pretty much celebrates the self-denial of suffering through a bad marriage for the sake of morality, and does it as such.
I have my own response to the Apatow movie as conservative line at my blog, but briefly put, I think the problem is that while Apatow clearly intends there to be a conservative message in the films, whether or not he’ll admit it, films are simply much more complicated beasts than political columns and are not reducible to the intentions of their authors.
August 10th, 2009 at 4:27 pm
Let’s not forget that Matt Y wants pot to stay banned because he thinks it makes his friends boring. DRUGS: THE BIPARTISAN SCAPEGOAT.
August 10th, 2009 at 4:29 pm
“tomemos, your armchair analysis of Knocked Up ignores the fact that Heigl finds out she can keep her job after she has her baby (interviewing pregnant celebs). She has no intention to quit her job to raise her child.”
She finds out that she can keep her job after she decides to have the baby. It’s a bit of unexpected good luck, and there’s no evidence that if her bosses said “lose the baby or you’re fired” that she would have aborted. On the contrary, she’s decided to have the baby regardless of any consequences to her career.
August 10th, 2009 at 4:33 pm
I see where you’re coming from but don’t you think Douhat had something more in mind than being risk adverse and boring when he was praising the film’s conservatism?
Oh, absolutely. I mean, despite what I wrote above, there’s a reason that the word “conservative” in the non-ideological sense is also associated with the hazily defined historically mutating ideology it happens to be associated with, whether that’s in the Edmund Burke sense, or the Ronald Reagan sense, or the Jerry Falwell sense. (Or the Douthat sense.) For Douthat, whom I’m generally disinclined to read directly after prior experience, I presume that this little personal conservatism is completely tied up with a larger social conservatism, which is a standpoint I completely reject – doesn’t mean he’s wrong about Funny People, which I haven’t seen. I was mostly reacting to the reaction of “there’s nothing conservative about Apatow’s movies! You let them win if marriage and lack of premarital sex are defined as exclusively conservative positions!” which I thought was sort of sad, because the word conservative means a variety of things (so does the word liberal!), and not all of them have to directly imply affinity for the way those names are assigned to the slew of positions distributed across the modern American political axis.
Incidentally, I don’t know (or pretend to know) how Apatow would respond to some of this; as I said, I kind of doubt that he’d be all “Yeah, go Conservative morality!” But I suspect that he does feel kind of strongly about a particular vision of the Good Life which incorporates a lot of traditional elements (and discards others), and his movies to some extent seem to advocate for it, in part because it’s what works for him.
August 10th, 2009 at 4:33 pm
“But while Knocked Up is clearly and shrilly antagonistic to people who have abortions, people who have pre-marital sex are, in 40 year old, the norm that Andy struggles to join.”
That works up to a point, but Elizabeth Banks’s character seems to work the other way. She’s a young, attractive, sexual woman who wants to have sex with Andy, and with whom he has a certain rapport. She’s the ideal woman for consequences-free sex (as opposed to the drunk girl who throws up on Andy and nearly kills them both in her car, not to mention the transsexual prostitute). But in the end Andy has to choose not to go for it, and in fact to be weirded out by her simply for masturbating. Banks isn’t totally shunned by the movie—Rogen gets together with her!—but she represents the no-strings-attached pre-marital sex that Andy has to reject in the movie.
I do agree with you, though, that “conservative” is too simple a label for Virgin, though not (as you say) for Knocked Up. Your analysis is interesting, I look forward to reading your post.
August 10th, 2009 at 4:37 pm
. Campaigns against gay rights, gay people, and gay sex thus have a lot of the structural elements of other forms of crusading against sexual excess or immorality, but they’re not really asking most people to do anything other than become self-righteous about their pre-existing preferences.
Most of this post is “gee, duh” but it was well put. Though I wouldn’t lay the fault for the oppression of LGBT people on solely on that impulse to scapegoat for wider “immorality”.
August 10th, 2009 at 4:39 pm
“In truth, they are really just a collection of unimaginative and ultimately mediocre comedies of little to no social importance.”
The quality of the movies is immaterial (I happen to think they’re both very good, though I haven’t seen Funny People). If they’re of “little to no social importance,” though, maybe you could explain why a whole slew of comedies following the exact same template, with the same male and female tropes, have been released since Forty Year Old Virgin came out?
August 10th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
“I have a lot of friends like that. Five years ago, when they were in their mid-20s in similar situations as the characters, they were Office Depot assistant managers. Now? They’re Office Depot managers.”
You say that like that’s not a good job to have.
August 10th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
And I would like to add that Douthat’s use of Apatow’s movies as an example is mistaken. I listened to a couple of interviews with him on NPR and he was asked if his movies reflected any social conservative views about family values pertaining to the examples given above, he explained that his movies mostly have to do with becoming an adult and how some people never make the transition to take up responsibility and the fact that even the most mature adults can have a childish, petty side hiding behind a facade.
August 10th, 2009 at 4:50 pm
Yeah. I have no problem with the idea that Andy chooses not to go for it – he’s in love with Catherine Keener’s character, after all – and if we’re being realistic, of course Andy is going to be weirded out by what Banks is doing in the tub (I do always laugh when he says “This is really graphic”). But at that point the distinction between Andy’s worldview and the movie’s has gotten a lot blurrier than it was at the beginning, and so what seems like a realistic and humorous character moment also feels kind of icky and judgmental.
August 10th, 2009 at 5:07 pm
On the abortion issue there does seem to be movies about women having the unexpected baby instead of an abortion
That may be because “woman gets pregnant, has abortion, gets on with life” is not a narrative particularly conducive to cinematic treatment.
Obviously all gays are individuals so they all won’t be liberal, like Greenwald, but still.
Glenn Greenwald’s not a liberal. At least, not a cookie-cutter liberal.
August 10th, 2009 at 5:12 pm
tomemos -
Don’t get me wrong, I personally find Apatow’s films to be eminently watchable and entertaining. But if they are conservative, it’s only in the trivial sense that all unimaginative works are conservative. That is to say he doesn’t go out of his way to challenge established opinion.
As a illuminating counterpoint, I think Kevin Smith’s Zack and Miri Make a Porno can be viewed as a direct critique of Apatow’s–and other similar genre flicks–uncritical acceptance of convention. But that a film fails to be subversive doesn’t mean that it is conservative in a meaningful or substantive sense.
August 10th, 2009 at 6:04 pm
That said, the burden lies on those challenging Sacred Tradition to explain why and how circumstances have changed such that the traditional teaching no longer applied.
Shorter Hector: times have changed, and time has specifically exposed how venerated figures in my religion got lots of stuff completely wrong, and therefore people challenging those beliefs based on modern understandings of morality and knowledge face a higher burden?!?
Hector, the burden of proof is on the ancients. If someone’s view that masturbation is a bad thing is placed up against modern scientific understanding of healthy human sexuality, it’s up to the ancients to prove that they weren’t just acting on ignorant superstition or for some purpose that was applicable 2000 years ago but is no longer applicable now.
August 10th, 2009 at 6:10 pm
And I would like to add that Douthat’s use of Apatow’s movies as an example is mistaken. I listened to a couple of interviews with him on NPR and he was asked if his movies reflected any social conservative views about family values pertaining to the examples given above, he explained that his movies mostly have to do with becoming an adult and how some people never make the transition to take up responsibility and the fact that even the most mature adults can have a childish, petty side hiding behind a facade.
Reality has a left-wing bias? Growing up is inherently conservative!
August 10th, 2009 at 7:26 pm
Exactly, and it’s funny because we can see ourselves in Apatow’s likable screw-ups. And we only care what happens in the end, because we care about them. Douthat might be concerned for their souls, but I don’t think he cares about them. After all, he thinks that getting away with dumb ass behavior is somewhat fundamental to the movie’s mass appeal. That says more about Douthat than anything else. It seems Mr. Douthat has spent a lot more time observing and judging the human condition than he’s spent actually engaging it. He would have made a fairly good priest.
August 10th, 2009 at 8:18 pm
Being conservative and having “values” does sound a lot better than saying, “I’m a socially inept, bum-fuck.” Guess that’s why so many conservatives employ high-dollar call girls (and boys).
August 10th, 2009 at 10:23 pm
Dilan,
Well, yes. As a Christian I believe that sacred tradition- i.e. the teachings that were handed down from Christ to the Apostles, from the Apostles to their successors, and so on, is generally a reliable source of truth. In a certain sense it’s more reliable than Scripture- the church created the Bible, not the other way round. It’s certainly possible that certain traditional beliefs may no longer be valid in changed circumstances, or that the church may have been wrong on a matter of knowledge about the physical and biological world (as distinct from matters of faith and morals) but the burden of proof for a Christian lies on those who are arguing that the church change its teachings.
Now I understand you’re not a Christian, and you don’t believe any of this stuff. That’s fine. Adam asked specifically about the reasons why _Christians_ oppose j*rking off, and I suggsted the grounds were based in tradition more than in scripture. Be that as it may, since you’re not a Christian I would not invoke tradition to persuade you, rather I would argue from natural law and from innate intuition. Wh*cking off is wrong because it separates the physical aspect of the sex act from its intended unitive and relational context. This is (to me) the strongest argument, and it is as true now as it ever was.
August 10th, 2009 at 11:10 pm
Hector,
You no doubt have thought about all this a great deal. I’d like to hear more about how you would try to persuade non-Christians, or non-theists generally, that masturbation is wrong. How do you get there without religious tradition or scripture? If you’re not a Christian or any other kind of theist, who or what _intended_ sex to occur (exclusively) in a unitive and relational context? Perhaps the use of “intended” is a linguistic shortcut, but it sounds to me like you are ascribing intention to nature.
August 11th, 2009 at 11:22 am
Wh*cking off is wrong because it separates the physical aspect of the sex act from its intended unitive and relational context.
The problem with this argument is that it sneaks religious belief back in via the phrase”intended,” so it’s question-begging and will not convince a nonbeliever any more than the explicit appeal to religious tradition will.
… or, what Jason L just said, which I just noticed.
August 11th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
Hum,
I’m not aware that Plato and Aristotle, the founders of the natural-law mode of reasoning, were Christians (or any other sort of theist).
“Behavior A is intended to take place in context B” can mean at least three different things:
- That natural selection favored a close association between behavior A and context B because such an association was beneficial for the reproductive success of the creatures involved
- That human beings are happiest, in the main and in the long run, when there is a close association between context A and behavior B
- That human talents, virtues, and longings are most aptly and fully fulfilled and expressed when behavior A and context B are associated together
- That God, or whatever other supernatural agent oversaw the history of life, intends that behavior A and context B be associated.
You can make an argument pertaining to any of these different senses of the word ‘intended’, and need not invoke any of the others. As a Christian believer in natural-law theory, I think that all of these senses of the word ‘intended’ are intimately related, but it isn’t necessary for you to accept that premise in order to accept the conclusion. The proof is that there are many atheists or agnostics who nevertheless do not believe in casual sex, swinging, wh*cking off, etc. The one is not necessarily dependent on the other.
August 11th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
1) This should go without saying, but what natural selection favors is generally a poor guide to ethical behavior.
2) (happiness) and 3) (fulfillment of talent, virtues, longings). These seem to me to be empirical questions. That is, we can speculate, using our reason and the cognitive tools and prejudices we have developed over the years, and those of thinkers before us, but ultimately the test of whether masturbation is generally bad for human happiness or fulfillment lies in the observable world “out there”, rather than in our minds.
Since it’s unlikely that we could conduct an experiment where two groups of otherwise identical children are brought up one being taught and receiving cultural signals that masturbation is wrong and the other being taught and receiving cultural signals that it is a normal and morally unproblematic part of human sexuality, and then seeing which group fares better either in terms of happiness or fulfillment, we have to rely on indirect evidence.
So if you want to persuade people who do not believe in supernatural agents with intentions for our conduct, you have to say what evidence there is in the world that suggests that masturbation is harmful (and that abstaining from masturbation is beneficial and not harmful).
August 11th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
Hector,
- That natural selection favored a close association between behavior A and context B because such an association was beneficial for the reproductive success of the creatures involved
- That human beings are happiest, in the main and in the long run, when there is a close association between context A and behavior B
- That human talents, virtues, and longings are most aptly and fully fulfilled and expressed when behavior A and context B are associated together
- That God, or whatever other supernatural agent oversaw the history of life, intends that behavior A and context B be associated.
Put aside the last of those, since we agree such an argument can’t be expected to convince a nonbeliever.
None of the others implies the existence of intention in the sense of an intending agent who designed the behavior/context — maybe you agree with that also.
More importantly, none of the first three senses implies the assigning of any moral status whatsoever to instances of behavior A that occur outside context B. You can’t draw moral conclusions from purely factual description of how humans work, unless you smuggle the morality into the description somehow (for example, by accepting the premise that anything that is “against Nature” is therefore morally wrong). In a nutshell, that is why I think natural-law-based morality is mistaken.
Furthermore, in this case, the fact that A may occur outside context B is not incompatible with, or destructive of, their close association. The fact that people masturbate is not incompatible with, or destructive of, the close association between sexual acts, love, reproduction, and unification of two people. It can even be a part of that association.
August 11th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
Hector, everyone agrees that your 4th point isn’t going to convince nonbelievers. Your first point is not a basis for any sort of moral belief for the reason Jason L says– evolutionary biology is no ground for morality (indeed, I am certain you would agree with this in the context of the claim that males have the innate urge to impregnate as many females as possible).
So 2 and 3 are where the action is, and they all depend on empirical claims. And the problem is that social conservatives don’t really have the real world on their side– for centuries, moral scolds have claimed that masturbation is bad but have not been able to come up with any evidence that it is. Meanwhile, the fields of psychology and psychiatry have offered up case studies that tend to establish that masturbation is a part of a healthy sex life.
The broader point, though, is that this is exactly why “natural law” reasoning is bogus. I actually don’t disagree that you can make some fairly weak claims based on natural law, such as that most of us are born with an innate understanding that killing other human beings is wrong. But the problem comes when translating this Aquinas-style “natural law” into what Aquinas called “human law”– because the general principles don’t get you very far. (The abortion issue is a great example of this actually, because while pro-choicers and pro-lifers agree that there is a moral norm against killing, they fundamentally disagree about its applicability to the context of abortion.)
So there isn’t anything behind claims of “natural law” except “I think God commands this” and “I think that this is bad for you”. The first one has no truck with non-believers and people with different religious faiths, and the second one is subject to empirical refutation. You don’t get to avoid debate on your contested empirical claims by just relabeling them “natural law”.
August 11th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
Engaging in some good old Self-Criticism:
I think I was wrong about the response to 2 and 3. Those are better seen as empirical questions, for which the available evidence does not support Hector’s view, than as instances of illegitimate derivation of moral conclusions from factual description. In other words, I’d like to join Jason and Dilan’s response.
August 11th, 2009 at 6:27 pm
Re: empirical questions, for which the available evidence does not support Hector’s view, than as instances of illegitimate derivation of moral conclusions from factual description
They’re only in part empirical questions. 3) in particular says that ‘B is the natural end of A, therefore B should not be separated from A’. If you deny that premise then the prohibition on j*rking off- and natural law moral reasoning in general- is not likely to be convicning to you, quite apart from any empirical questions. Ultimately, if you think that we create our own meaning, purpose, and identity and that there is no pre-existing purpose or order to which we need to conform ourselves, then you’re unlikely to find natural law arguments convincing, as those are quite basic premises.
August 11th, 2009 at 7:15 pm
They’re only in part empirical questions. 3) in particular says that ‘B is the natural end of A, therefore B should not be separated from A’. If you deny that premise then the prohibition on j*rking off- and natural law moral reasoning in general- is not likely to be convicning to you, quite apart from any empirical questions.
But then we’re back into the same fault as the evolutionary argument. Simply because something is the natural end of something else doesn’t mean that it isn’t something to be avoided. Fistulas and death in childbirth were once natural ends of pregnancy. In some parts of the world, they still are. But most of us would agree that attempts to avoid this sort of thing through medical intervention are perfectly legitimate.
Similarly, scurvy is the natural end of sailing around the world. Yet I don’t think anyone would claim that it is immoral for sailors to take supplements of Vitamin C to avoid it.
And mosquito bites and attacks are the natural end of camping out in the woods. But nobody says that campers who take precautions against such things are immoral.
There’s no particular reason to think that what is natural is automatically good. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t. Now, of course, one can argue for various empirical reasons that severing sex and pregnancy is a bad idea. But then you are back out of natural law and into a debate in which social conservatives don’t usually do very well, because our traditions of sexual morality haven’t held up all that well against evidence.
But there’s no reason to think that natural = good any more than one should think product of evolution = good.
August 11th, 2009 at 7:38 pm
This had dropped off the front page, Dilan, so I don’t think we should continue this discussion. But suffice it to say that ‘natural’ in this context (in the context of scholastic reasoning in general) doesn’t mean ‘occurs in nature’. To say ‘B is the final end of A’ means that inasmuch as in behavior A we see various human capacities, virtues, and longings expressed, B is the fulfilment and perfection of those. That is to say, in this particular argument, that by looking at human and animal sexuality, we can perceive (particularly in the higher animals, and most particularly in humans) that sex is something with deep emotional as well as physical resonance, and that the physical pleasure is intended to go along with an emotional, spiritual connection. We can look at voles dying after being separated from their partners, or at geese forming life long pair bonds (I know that much has been made of adulterous geese, so spare your ink). And we can see in the animals, and in human behavior, imperfect approximations to what we would consider a healthy sexuality, and we can deduce what that idealized healthy sexuality would be (as we deduce the existence of perfect circles from the imperfect circles we see in nature).
As we Christians would say, sex is the carnal figure of a spiritual reality. That being said, to dissociate the physical aspect of the act from its spiritual and relational aspects is to denature sex itself, and to do violence against the natural order. The whole premise of your reasoning is that we are free and autonomous beings with the right to make up our own meaning, purpose, and identity. But in truth, we aren’t. There is a natural order, and morality consists in obeying and fulfiling it.
August 11th, 2009 at 7:54 pm
That is to say, in this particular argument, that by looking at human and animal sexuality, we can perceive (particularly in the higher animals, and most particularly in humans) that sex is something with deep emotional as well as physical resonance, and that the physical pleasure is intended to go along with an emotional, spiritual connection.
Some people can say that, and other people can say other things about it.
We can look at voles dying after being separated from their partners, or at geese forming life long pair bonds (I know that much has been made of adulterous geese, so spare your ink).
This is very selective, Hector. A lot of sex in nature is rape. A lot of sex in nature is casual sex. And there’s also plenty of masturbation in nature as well. (My dog does it all the time, and she’s spayed.)
And we can see in the animals, and in human behavior, imperfect approximations to what we would consider a healthy sexuality, and we can deduce what that idealized healthy sexuality would be (as we deduce the existence of perfect circles from the imperfect circles we see in nature).
You can see this if you want to, Hector, but again, other people will see different things.
Your conception of Natural Law is a Rorschach Test, Hector. You see what you want to see, and there’s no reason why that should apply to anyone else.
August 11th, 2009 at 8:19 pm
Dilan,
We appear to have reached an impasse here- you find my views horrid, and I think the same of yours. (Your ‘Rorschach Test’ remark suggest that too….ultimately you and I are starting from irreconcilable moral premises, and unless you or I have a road-to-Damascus conversion, there’s a limit to what progress we can make.)
I give you a lot of sh*t on this blog, so I’d like to make clear that, like St. Augustine regarding the Donatists, I’m man enough to admit when I’m wrong and you’re right. I’ve changed my mind (after reading and reflection) on the issue of Kashmir, just as I have on gay marriage. I now think that the Indian annexation in 1947 was wrong, whatever the provocation there was, and I disavow my many previous statements to the contrary. What the situation should be now is a more difficult question, but probably either independence or a new partition. You make a piss-poor case for your point of view, but your conclusion happens to be correct- Kashmir should not be ruled by India.
August 11th, 2009 at 9:41 pm
Hector, I do believe that the cause of much of the disputes about sex and gender that divide society in such fundamental ways is the fact that people start from irreconcilable moral premises. Where people in fact start from reconcilable moral premises, they are often able to achieve some form of consensus.
What I would suggest is that the fact that people have irreconcilable moral premises is an argument for some sort of pluralism where different people are able to live their lives in the way they wish to. That allows conservative Mormons to practice a conservative sexual morality in Utah while secular liberals practice a liberal sexual morality in San Francisco.
Meanwhile, we all have the same Social Security system, because with respect to that issue, our moral premises aren’t as far apart from each other and we have been able to attain a rough consensus. We find consensus where we can and create space for different ways of life where we can’t.
As for Kashmir, thanks for the kind words. It’s a sign of intellectual health to be evaluating and reevaluating your positions on important issues, whether or not you change your mind in the direction of agreeing with me or not.
August 13th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
Listening to you fools try and justify your reasons for treating human beings as anything less than human beings in itself proves the inexistence of God.
And Heterosexuals screaming their heads off about morality… Really folks? Really?
You might take a look around at the behavior of Heterosexuals before you open your pie holes about morality.
If there is a God, he certainly made a big ‘oops’ in leaving ANYTHING to the Heterosexual to protect.
ESPECIALLY the children.
Morality indeed, Heterosexuals. Morality indeed.
August 13th, 2009 at 6:43 pm
Ok, so it’s easy for heterosexuals to endorse a commandment with no bite for them. And it’s also easy for them to endorse the opposite view on homosexuality. Parity of reasoning, anyone?
August 13th, 2009 at 6:48 pm
That’s completely false. The concept of a function in nature in still surprisingly robust, and attempts to analyze it entirely in terms of evolutionary history are not unproblematic. The concept of the good is of course a difficult one, but your view, which separates it utterly from anything true about the world, is an unfortunate by-product of Enlightenment-era philosophy of language and its after-effects.
August 14th, 2009 at 3:32 am
[...] Yglesias has some rather trenchant remarks occasioned by Ross Douthat’s column on Funny People. Agreeing with Douthat that the reason [...]
August 14th, 2009 at 3:57 am
[...] Matthew Yglesias, via Halden Share and Enjoy: [...]
August 14th, 2009 at 8:52 am
[...] Ease Into Virtue Yglesias makes a dynamite observation about part of the reason leaders of social conservatives put so much [...]
August 14th, 2009 at 10:42 am
This is fantastically well stated.